Several threads on here have skewed to topics of player progression and how to accomodate that with either party play or quest-based leveling, but both of those are kind of determined by how your character strengthens. I'd like to see your views on how a character's skills and traits move up.

I always liked the idea of experience points being strictly for levels and having skill points for Job Abilities, Latent Job traits (like accuracy and enmity) and Weapon Skills. It would be similar to skilling up in XI.

Weapon Skills: Would be completely dependent on how high your weapon skill is, but also have caps based on your Character Level. I imagine a mix of XI and FFVII on this. Auto-attacks will increase your sword skill, but WS's will increase it faster. Heavy swing is gained at 50 sword skill, but your sword skill is capped below 50 until you hit level 25. This way, people don't get a WS too early, but your skills are also not automatically given to you once your Character level simply hits a certain point.

Job abilities: In addition to earning exp each fight, characters earn an amount of Ability points as well. These are spent on abilities your character can use, and any ability can be chosen if you have the appropriate job leveled. For example, If you're leveling WAR as your first job, than you can choose WAR abilities. If you decide to level LNC next, you can pick abilities as your LNC level increases, as well as any WAR abilities you've unlocked. Each char would have a certain amount of slots that could be dedicated do "outside job abilities." There would be no restriction such as WAR not being able to allocate CNJ abilities (though this may not be wise.)

I'm obviously not thinking all these things should be implemented into the game RIGHT NAO... I'm just putting my view for fun progression out there. I've discussed some of these things in the past, but not all together. It would allow players to build truly solo-machines if that's their gig, or a group of people could build the ultimate fighting force as they see fit. Accompanied with appropriate avenues of leveling, I don't think it would necessarily hold anyone back or alienate them based strictly on time consumption, therefor pleasing both "casuals" and "hardcores."

____________________________

Our team is like a flock of woodpeckers in a petrified forest. We just need to keep working and keep an eye open for opportunity.